Comment: I am curious about the word "sootikin", which is claimed as the
term for a rather disgusting and possibly apocryphal phenomenon.

It is defined in urbandictionary.com
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sootikin) as "A small,
mouse-shaped deposit formed in the vaginal cleft, usually of poorer women
who did not wear undergarments - common until the nineteenth century. A
sootikin built up over several weeks, even months, of not washing. It was
composed of particles of soot, dirt, sweat, smegma (qv) and vaginal and
menstrual discharge. When it reached a certain size and weight, it tended
to work loose and drop from under the woman's skirt."

This is the identical wording found in almost every search result; that or
a description that then offers a link back to this wording on some site or
other. This is what leads me to believe it may well be an urban legend.
The original source appears to be "The Dictionary of Disgusting Facts", a
1986 book by Alan Williams and Maggie Noach
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dic...sgusting_Facts).
However, there doesn't appear to be any supporting reference material to
suggest that sootikins, at least this definition of the word, existed or
were common.